Do I sell my Series 3?

Ok the Land Rover is safe! I'm going to keep it

Been offroading today avoiding the stupidly thick mud and didn't get stuck once. Had a really good day, heres some photos for you










Still stupidly cold up these places, Resolven/Hirwaun way. That lake is frozen!



Yes I need a front bumper, anybody local to me (Port Talbot) have one for sale?


Had a great day out in a great vehicle

great to hear your keeping the landy. enjoy what you can do and keep practicing you will get more comfident and better in no time you will be showing your friends up.

Well I started off with a quick reply but it's become more... It's nice to see that you're going to stick with the Series but thought I'd point out some things that you might not have thought of.

First of all, I'd say that ~80% of off-roading is the driver, 15% the choice of tyres and 5% the vehicle. Ok I might be slightly exaggerating but that's how I view it.

Looking at the first point (the 80%) one thing I was given for my 18th by my parents was a day off-roading with Jumbo at Woodpark Offroad. I would have said that I learnt almost everything worthwhile I know about driving off-road from those few hours I spent with him. It's just a shame I can only remember a few things although I think quite a bit was absorbed into my subconscious. Of those things I can remember 3 which are invaluable and 1 which would be but never had to use it yet (in a proper situation).

1. Low second will get you everywhere
2. Almost never used the brakes off-road
3. How to get out of thick, gloopy, porridge-mud as he called it most times without the need for any recovery equipment
4. How to restart a stalled vehicle after a failed hill attempt in a way that will always keep the engine braking.

Going to the second point (the tyres), in the week or so while I've been back from London it's been highlighted numerous times how the choice of tyre makes a difference. I do have a set of very off-road biased tyres on my S3 but I have to say that I've been up a 1 in 2 on sheet ice with those and with hardly a skid, the only times I've skidded have been when I've deliberately tried to make it slide to see what the limits / feel is like and that took some doing. It's a shame you don't seem to be able to get those anymore.

The third point (the vehicle):

We've got three 4x4s at home, mine (the S3), my sisters (Defender 90, Td5) and Dad's (Mitubishi Shogun, LWB).

The advantages of my sisters are that it's more powerful than mine so more pleasant on the road and it's a bit comfier in general. It's also got the advantage of slightly taller tyres and combined with the coils got a bit clearance than my setup at the moment on the Series.
The huge disadvantage (perhaps only with hers) is that it's more complicated, we've had the engine management blow up and render the vehicle useless, it's spewed oil all over the M4 because of a bung that isn't held in properly, the front prop has gone (although that was partially our fault) and there now appears to be an issue with the turbo. It's still a fantastically capable machine, just not simple (although that's compared to mine).

The huge advantage of the shogun with respect to off-roading is that it's got 3 lockable diffs. Other pluses are that it's more powerful, more gadgets and waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy more comfortable. Although more things to go wrong (but they tend not too). We treat this one as more of a comfy car though and thus hardly gets used off-road properly because basically we don't want to damage it. And everything's a PITA to get at because it's so crammed full of stuff (e.g. to get the alternator off requires the removal of the power steering pump, an oil pump, an oil filter and something else (forgot for the moment).

So the point of that rather long comparison is that I wouldn't trade my Series for either because basically it's a no-frills vehicle but because it's no frills there's nothing to go wrong and if it does it can be fixed easily, quickly (most of the time) and cheaply. I reckon with another person I could strip the major bodywork off mine in an hour or two. Try doing that to the Shogun (or the another japanese car for that matter).

Just got back from doing Soar y Mynydd and Strata Florida with fenby1978 and a couple of others and put it this way mine's a "standard" vehicle. I put that in quotes because the configuration's the same but things have been "upgraded". E.g. galved chassis and there's a winch on the front. John had a Series III as well but now with a 200Tdi engine in it (road tyres) and the other two were a bob-tailed Rangie and a Disco both with 2" lifts (from what I gather) and decent tyres all also had raised intakes.

John got stuck once or twice because of the road-tyres, the rangie dislocated itself temporarily and the Disco lost a light in the bomb-hole, I got stuck once which was completely down to me, after getting tugged back out of the hole I went though it no problem at all 2nd go around.

Basically what I'm getting around to saying is that the two Series led the way and did everything that the more modified Rangie and Disco did (although I did decline the bomb hole, long story but someone I was towing reversed into my back door and the glass is now bent and under tension so I didn't want to shatter it as a climbing trip is relying on my vehicle being available in a few days). The winch was never even uncovered.

So there we go:

1. Practice off-roading (would highly recommend Jumbo and he's "kind" of near to you)
2. Decent tyres
3. Series are best

Hope there were some useful tit-bits in there.

That was a good read Ed

I belive the reasons I was getting stuck in my Series 3 and the 2 Suzukis were coping just fine is the extra weight the landy has. The Suzukis have and unladen weight of 950is kg and the landy has 1400ish kg! The blue suzuki in my pics above has bigger (and better) tyres than me so it's foot print in the mud is far lighter and larger than my Landys and of course in mud that means its less likely to 'sink'. Next time I get stuck, which will hopefully be a hell of alot less often now I know not to just follow the Suzukis and annalyse what I drive over before hand, I shall take photos. I think there will be a resounding 'your daft for thinking you'd get through there' from you all LOL The Zooks just fly at it and bounce through it all, the Landy hits it and sinks even with quicker run ups than the Zooks!


I need to get tubes in my front tyres and experiment with the pressures a bit but I'm fairly sure the problem, well not really a problem, just a difference, is the weight. Short, narrow and light with big tyres will always be better in mud than longer, wider and heavier with almost as big tyres

StuntmanAd said:

That was a good read Ed

I belive the reasons I was getting stuck in my Series 3 and the 2 Suzukis were coping just fine is the extra weight the landy has. The Suzukis have and unladen weight of 950is kg and the landy has 1400ish kg! The blue suzuki in my pics above has bigger (and better) tyres than me so it's foot print in the mud is far lighter and larger than my Landys and of course in mud that means its less likely to 'sink'. Next time I get stuck, which will hopefully be a hell of alot less often now I know not to just follow the Suzukis and annalyse what I drive over before hand, I shall take photos. I think there will be a resounding 'your daft for thinking you'd get through there' from you all LOL The Zooks just fly at it and bounce through it all, the Landy hits it and sinks even with quicker run ups than the Zooks!


I need to get tubes in my front tyres and experiment with the pressures a bit but I'm fairly sure the problem, well not really a problem, just a difference, is the weight. Short, narrow and light with big tyres will always be better in mud than longer, wider and heavier with almost as big tyres

Click to expand...

While I don't deny that weight (or rather a lack of it) makes things a lot easier in mud. Remember that a S3 isn't that heavy compared to many 4x4s, compare it to any of the new Land Rovers, D3, D4, Rangie and so on and you're looking at about 2.7 tonnes. Admittedly they have fancy new electronics but they just do what a driver can do, just slightly (ok substantially) faster. You can (I've been told, I've only had limited success) simulate a diff-lock by left-foot braking at the same time (cadence braking) which has the act of applying some friction to the spinning wheel and shifting the power around slightly.

The main thing with mud is to keep the momentum up. It's only if (or more suitably, when) you get stuck that things become a problem. There's two tricks which Jumbo taught me:

Rocking
Takes a bit of practice but you can rock the vehicle backwards and forwards on the clutch (treat the vehicle as a swing and try and time things so you build the momentum), if you get it right and provided you're not just making the hole bigger then you can most times rock yourself out of the hole. Basically this gives you back some of the momentum that you lost when you stopped.

Exhausting
You can also combine this with a trick that's exhausting to pull off in a Series (even if you have power steering it's a bit of an effort) but basically in as high-a-gear as possible keep it on slightly more than a tick-over and turn the steering from full-lock to full-lock. The moment you feel some traction take your feet off the throttle and stop turning the wheel, if you're lucky / skill-full then you should be able to drive out of the mud.

They take practice but if you can master them then you can surprise everyone when they begin to get ready to recover you and you just drive out.

Tyres though do make a big difference, particularly from going from the slicks that were on mine when I got it originally to those beasts.

Trying to keep up with modified SJs in a standard leaf sprung Land-Rover is bound to be difficult. That blue SJ looks like it's got something like 265mm wide tyres on it. The SIII looks like it's got 7.50 x 16 tyres on which are about 200mm wide. The ratio of tyre width to vehicle weight for the SJ would be 265/950=0.279 mm/kg and for your Land-Rover 200/1400=0.143 mm/kg. So by my reckoning the ground pressure exerted by the SJ would be about half that of the Land-Rover. What you need then is 400mm wide tyres to have the same ground pressure as the Suzuki! High ground pressure is not good on soft bottomless mud, but it is supposed to be good on surfaces with a thin layer of slipery mud or snow with solid ground underneath, because the vehicle with the higher ground pressure is more likely to cut through the mud/snow and find grip. You need to find a bit of trail like this which your Land-Rover can just about manage, bring your mates with their suzukis along and watch them flounder! If you want to try to keep up the Suzukis on soft ground then 235/85 R16 tyres will fit without mods (265/75 R16 tyres might fit too) and some weight could be lost from the Land-Rover by removing the hard top and rear door, fitting a Bikini top hood and running it without the door tops and rear tailgate. It still won't have a ground pressure as low as an SJ though. Console yourself with the fact that your SIII has more heritage, is a design classic, British, can tow more, carry more, seat up to 7 people, should last longer and parts supply is likely to continue long after that for the SJ has dried up in a few years time.

have you got parobolics leafs on they make a world of difference for articulation i used to have a daihatsu before the 90 and it was better than my mates sereis on some things but they were pretty equal im a big landy fan but sj410/413 are miles more capable than landys from what ive seen out of the box